Identity Politics: Turkey

(1,152 words)

Images of women have played a central role in
Turkey's
national project since the creation of a secularist republic in 1923.
“Turkish” identity emerged from the process of
nation-building that was associated with the transition from the Ottoman
Empire, with its ties to Arabic and Persian Islamic culture, to the
Republic of
Turkey,
which looked to Turkic roots and modern secularism as sources of
identity.
“Turkishness”
was retrieved from folk culture (Mardin 2002) to become the vehicle of
“modern…